


The Fool, Reversed

by tinydooms



Series: We Three Together [12]
Category: The Mummy (1999), The Mummy Series
Genre: Airplane Adventures, F/M, Friendship, Gen, Grief
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-28
Updated: 2020-06-28
Packaged: 2021-03-04 00:21:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,715
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24954457
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tinydooms/pseuds/tinydooms
Summary: Before tonight, he had thought that God had thrown him all of the hell allotted to one person in a lifetime. The War, the trenches, the constant noise and ceaseless parade of death. His parents’ deaths, the telegram delivered by a boy on a bicycle, Evie’s shriek of grief and his own sickened collapse to the floor of their house in Kent...Jonathan wrapped his arms around himself and shuddered. In that moment, none of it compared to the horror of watching his baby sister give herself up to the Creature.
Relationships: Evy Carnahan O'Connell/Rick O'Connell
Series: We Three Together [12]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1714483
Comments: 20
Kudos: 72





	The Fool, Reversed

**The Fool, Reversed**

_Cairo and the Western Desert, October 1922_

In the deep velvet darkness of night, Jonathan sat with Rick O’Connell and Ardeth Bey and waited. 

Before tonight, he had thought that God had thrown him all of the hell allotted to one person in a lifetime. The War, the trenches, the constant noise and ceaseless parade of death. His parents’ deaths, the telegram delivered by a boy on a bicycle, Evie’s shriek of grief and his own sickened collapse to the floor of their house in Kent...Jonathan wrapped his arms around himself and shuddered. In that moment, none of it compared to the horror of watching his baby sister give herself up to the Creature. Of all the damned foolish, stupidly heroic things to do, this was the worst, and she had done it willingly, without question, to save their lives. 

That had been two hours ago. Two whole bloody hours they had been trapped in the mosque, waiting for the crowd outside to disperse so they could make it to the car. Evie could very well be dead by now. Jonathan couldn’t bear it. She might be dead, and they were just _sitting_ here inside the gates, biding their time. In the darkness, he felt more than saw O’Connell turn to look at him. 

“Hey,” O’Connell murmured. “She’s gonna be okay.”

“How can you possibly know that?” Jonathan snapped.

O’Connell sighed and was silent for a long moment. 

“I have to believe it,” he said at last. He sounded exhausted. “And so do you, or else we’ll both give into despair, and we can’t do that.”

Jonathan sighed. Damn the man, he was right. There was a chance that Evie was still alive, that they would get to her in time. A chance, and they had to hold onto it as long as possible. 

Sitting across from them, keeping watch out of the gate, Ardeth Bey spoke for the first time in hours. 

“He must take her to Hamunaptra. Magician or not, it will take him time to get there.” He gestured at the street outside. “I believe the way is clear now.”

Standing, Jonathan and O’Connell peered over his shoulders, out into the street. The last of the bewitched Cairenes had straggled away, presumably home to bed. The car was where they had left it, jammed up against the broken fountain. Thank God Jonathan had had the sense to put the keys into his pocket as they’d fled. 

In silence, the three men climbed over the gate and dropped into the street. They were halfway across the plaza when Ardeth Bey changed direction and hurried towards a bundle of rags lying near the open manhole. Jonathan looked after him and then looked away, his gorge rising. He kept walking towards the car, even as O’Connell realized what the Medjai was doing and turned to follow. 

“I can’t,” Jonathan said to him, an image of arms and legs sticking out of the stinking Poziѐres mud flashing across his vision. “I can’t do it, O’Connell. Call me a coward--”

“You’re not a coward,” O’Connell said, gripping his arm. “Get the car. I’ll help him.”

Jonathan did as he was told, fighting the urge to be sick as O’Connell went to help Ardeth lay out the broken remains of the valiant Dr. Bey. They carried him to the gates of the mosque and left him there, wrapped in Ardeth Bey’s cloak. The Imam would look after him, come daylight. 

The car was mostly unharmed, though the front fender was crushed in, and Jonathan was able to start it and back it out of the fountain. They drove in silence through the city, O’Connell occasionally murmuring directions. Jonathan was grateful for the orders. He couldn’t think quite straight, and it was only as they were crossing the bridge towards Giza that Jonathan realized where they were going. 

“The airfield?” he said, surprised. 

“Yep,” O’Connell replied. “Winston wants an adventure, remember? He has a plane.”

And a bright flare of hope filled Jonathan’s heart. 

The sun had begun to rise before they reached the No. 9 Auxiliary Airfield west of the Great Pyramids, flushing the sky with rosy pink light. Jonathan had never been out to Winston’s airfield; it had mostly been abandoned since the Armistice, the air force content to operate from the bigger base north of Cairo. He knew that Winston Havelock was the last of his garrison at the place, the only man in it who hadn’t met a horrible fiery death over North Africa. How sober would he be at four o’clock in the morning?

The airfield was mostly deserted; a couple of kids raised the barrier as the car approached and saluted them as they went by. More children herded goats and played on a single yellow biplane that sat on the runway. They waved as Jonathan parked the car, and rushed to gather around it as the men climbed out. 

“Sabah alkhyr, O’Connell effendi!” they shouted. “Good morning!”

“Sabah alkhyr,” O’Connell replied, smiling at the children and seeming not to notice how Jonathan and Ardeth Bey were looking at him. “Where’s Winston, guys?”

“He is taking his breakfast over there,” one of the older boys said, waving at the dunes at the edge of the airfield. “Will you take us in your motor car, O’Connell effendi?”

“Not right now,” O’Connell replied, hauling his duffel bag of guns out of the boot. “But tell you what, you guys keep a good eye on it and don’t push on the horn, and we’ll talk. Okay?”

This seemed agreeable; they left the children gathered around the car, climbing in and out of it, as they walked around the motley collection of buildings towards Winston, who was sitting under an umbrella at the top of a small dune. 

“Who are all these children?” Ardeth Bey asked. 

“Local orphans, mostly,” O’Connell replied. “Winston lets them sleep in the old barracks. They go into Giza for work.”

This was an astonishing piece of information, and not one that O’Connell elaborated on as he led them across the compound. Winston watched them coming, sipping something from a teacup. Jonathan prayed that it was actually tea, not something stronger. Soft jazz played from a gramophone. Jazz and tea at four in the morning. Well, why not? Winston didn’t have a kidnapped sister to be worried about. 

“Morning, Winston!” O’Connell called. “A word?”

Winston surveyed them with interest over his teacup. “Is there a problem, gentlemen?”

“You could say that,” Jonathan replied. 

Winston raised his teacup, affable and interested. “So what’s your little problem got to do with His Majesty’s Royal Air Corps?”

“Not a damn thing,” O’Connell replied. He sounded almost cheerful. 

Winston’s eyes brightened; he sat up and leaned forward. “Is it dangerous?”

“Well, you probably won’t live through it.” O’Connell was definitely sounding chipper. Jonathan shot him a look, but he ignored it. 

“By Jove, do you really think so?” Ah yes, there was Winston’s death wish coming out to play. Jonathan swallowed, glancing at Ardeth Bey to see what he thought. The Medjai’s face was impassive, but his eyes held a note of curiosity. Jonathan sighed. 

“Everybody else we’ve bumped into has died. Why not you?” he said. 

Winston leaped to his feet. “What’s the challenge, then?”

“Rescue the damsel in distress, kill the bad guy, save the world.” 

O’Connell had definitely read too many dime novels. It did the trick, though; Winston bounded to his feet, laughing gleefully and proclaiming himself at their service. Abandoning his breakfast, he strode off back towards the compound, leaving the men to trail after him. 

“Selim! Abdul! Fill the gas tank! I’m taking the old girl up. Have you eaten breakfast, men? No? Well, go find something; there’s always food in the kitchen. I suppose all three of you need to come along? Issa, fetch some ropes, there’s a good lad. Look lively, men! Ha ha!”

O’Connell flashed his sideways grin at Jonathan and Ardeth and followed Winston. Jonathan collared a loose child and inquired after the direction of the kitchen. In short order he and Ardeth Bey were raiding the larder, assembling a hasty meal of ful and boiled eggs and bread while water boiled for coffee. They ate standing up, leaning on the kitchen table. 

“Your brother is very resourceful,” Ardeth Bey said, pouring coffee into tea cups. 

Jonathan blinked. “My what? Oh, O’Connell. He’s, uh, he’s not my brother.”

Ardeth Bey looked surprised. “Forgive me, I have misunderstood. He is very much attached to your sister.”

Jonathan smirked. “Saw that, did you? No, we only met him a few weeks ago. He was our guide out to Hamunaptra.”

“Ah.” 

Ardeth Bey said no more, which was lucky, because O’Connell chose that moment to swing around the kitchen door. He dropped his duffel bag by the door and sloped across to the stove. There was a bounce in his step; he was optimistic. 

“Winston says be ready to go in fifteen minutes,” he said, helping himself to ful and coffee. “We should pack some of this for Evelyn; she’ll be starving by now.”

Jonathan glanced at Ardeth Bey; the other man’s eyes were amused, but he said nothing. The unspoken thought of “if she is still alive” was heavy in all their minds. Jonathan swallowed and reached for a clean cloth to wrap bread and cheese and eggs in. She was alive. She had to be alive. 

Fifteen minutes later, looking over the solution Winston and O’Connell had come up with to get all of them to Hamunaptra, Jonathan reflected that their own deaths were imminent. 

“Come on,” O’Connell said, strapping him to the wing with stout leather cords. “Pilots do this with baggage all of the time.”

Jonathan glared at him through the goggles he had donned. “This is either madness or brilliance.”

From the cockpit, Winston gave his bark of laughter. “Ahaha! It’s remarkable how often those two traits coincide, what? Ahaha!”

Jonathan met O’Connell’s eye. The American gave him a sheepish look and socked him lightly on the shoulder. “You’ll be fine. Just hold on.”

 _Just hold on._ Jonathan shook his head. He wished he could see Ardeth Bey’s reaction of being strapped down to the other wing. He felt obscurely relieved that his brandy flask was tucked deep in his pocket. If they lived through this, he would need it. 

The flight itself wasn’t so bad, at first. They took off into the bright morning light and flew due west for an hour. Once Jonathan began to get over the fright of being stretched belly down with nothing between himself and a long fall but a slender steel wing, he almost began to enjoy himself. O’Connell must have drawn Winston a map, for they were following the same route that he had led them back to Cairo on. It was interesting to see the desert from the air. Still, when O’Connell whistled at him and asked if he was alright, Jonathan replied in the negative. No he was _not_ bloody alright. He was strapped to a tin can, hurtling through the air in search of a three thousand year old undead maniac who may or may not have killed the only family he had left. Of course he wasn’t alright. 

But as the flight continued, Jonathan couldn’t help feeling hopeful. The journey that had taken three long, weary days by camel took them little over an hour by plane. For all his foibles, Winston was a good pilot. The day was clear, not a cloud in the sky to impede their way. There was Hamunaptra, up in the middle distance. Jonathan clung to the wing and prayed to a god he had long thought abandoned him that they would not be too late to save Evie. And then he saw the whirlwind. 

It was huge, a sand tornado that rivalled drawings of American tornadoes he had seen in newspapers, and it moved with purpose. Jonathan stared out at it. How could a whirlwind move with purpose? Through the roaring of wind in his ears, he could hear Winston shouting that he had never seen one so big. 

“Never?” O’Connell bellowed.

“No!”

Well, that wasn’t alarming _at all_. And then, before Jonathan’s astonished eyes, the tornado resolved itself into three figures on a sand dune--the wretched Imhotep, that rat Beni, and Evie. Jonathan gave a whoop. 

“Do you see her, O’Connell?!”

“I see her!” O’Connell shouted back, a smile in his voice.

Alive! She was alive! They weren’t too late! Evie had seen them, too, and was hopping up and down. Jonathan resisted the urge to cheer. She was still in Imhotep’s clutches. And he, too, had seen them. 

“Oh, my God,” O’Connell said. 

Jonathan snuck a look over his shoulder and immediately wished he hadn’t. A wall of sand rose up behind them, charging in their direction. A face appeared in it: Imhotep’s face, smirking at them, his mouth opening in a roar to engulf them. Jonathan screeched like a child; O’Connell was screaming and firing at it; Ardeth Bey was yelling on the other wing. Winston roared with maniacal laughter, revving the engine and pointing them in a nose-dive over the edge of a cliff. 

_This is it,_ Jonathan thought, not for the first time in his life. _We’re going to die; we’re dead._

The sand engulfed them, blinding him, scouring his face. And then, somehow, it stopped. The sand fell away and the plane sputtered forward, tottering, and the engine burst into flame, and they crash-landed into the rocks behind the crumbling walls of Hamunaptra. 

Jonathan hung upside down from the wing, panting. He seemed to be several feet from the body of the plane itself. Ardeth Bey was stumbling to his feet, his hair standing on end; O’Connell clambered out of the gunner seat and fell with a yelp on his arse. Both men stood swaying and panting. Jonathan reached around the wing and felt for the straps holding him down. He couldn’t find them. 

“Excuse me!” he called to his companions. “A little help would be useful if it’s not too much trouble!” 

“Yeah, yeah, all right.” O’Connell tottered over, tossing his gun bag down, and loosened the straps so that Jonathan fell to the sand. O’Connell took him by the hand and pulled him to his feet. 

“You okay?”

“Yes, you?”

“Fine.” O’Connell stumbled back towards the body of the plane. “Winston! Hey, Winston!”

There was no answer from the man in the cockpit, and O’Connell seemed to go very still, bending over him. Jonathan’s heart sank. Winston sat in the pilot’s seat, gripping the stick, with a smile on his face. Jonathan didn’t need O’Connell’s grim face to tell him that he was dead. 

The ground seemed to waver around them. The plane began to sink. O’Connell, too, wavered. 

“Quicksand!” yelled Jonathan, seizing his friend and dragging him back. “Get back! It’s quicksand!”

O’Connell dived forward, snatching his gun bag, and Jonathan yanked his arm to pull him back. Ardeth Bey joined them as they stumbled away from the wreckage, taking refuge on the rocky ground a few feet away. They stood watching as the plane sank from sight. O’Connell saluted Winston as he sank from view. 

“He always did want to die with his boots on,” Jonathan murmured. “God rest his soul.”

O’Connell said nothing, merely hefted his gun bag and, socking Jonathan lightly on the chest, walked away. Jonathan remembered then what he had said in the bar--had it only been yesterday?--about how Winston had helped him get back on his feet after the War. So O’Connell had lost yet another friend. Still, there was nothing now to do but to fall into step behind him. Winston was finally at peace. Now they had to save Evie, and save the world. 

  
  


Author's Note: Sorry for the long pause between updates; I was attacked first by melancholy and then by period pain, so got no writing done for a few days. The Fool, Reversed in tarot means, among other things, chaos. I think we can all agree that this part of the movie is very chaotic. :-) I hope you like the story! Please comment and let me know what you think!


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